JEREMIAH EAMES RANKIN
RANKIN, JEREMIAH EAMES, D.D., preacher and pastor, author and poet, writer of hymns sung round the world, and President of Howard University, was born at Thornton, New Hampshire, in 1828. His great grandfather was a native of Paisley, Scotland, and emigrated to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1776. His father, Reverend Andrew Rankin, was a Congregational minister who filled many positions of usefulness with dignity, serving for some years as secretary of the Congregational Home Missionary society. His mother, Lois Eames Rankin, seems to have been a noble woman, exercising a marked moral and spiritual influence over her gifted son. As a boy he had vigorous health, confirmed by the free country and village life in which he passed his youth. His early tastes and interests were of a literary nature. His time was at his own disposal, and although he taught during his vacations to help to pay his way through college, his courses of study at school and college were not interfered with by teaching in term-time. His studies preparatory to college he pursued at South Berwick academy, Maine, and at Chester academy, Vermont; and he was graduated from Middlebury college, Vermont, in 1848. After leaving college he taught for three years. He studied theology at Andover seminary and was graduated from that institution in 1854. He received from Middlebury college the degree of D.D. in 1869 and that of LL.D. in 1889.
He was ordained to the ministry in 1855. He was pastor of the Congregational church at Potsdam, New York, from 1854 to 1855; at St. Albans, Vermont, from 1855 to 1862; at Lowell, Massachusetts, from 1862 to 1864; at Charlestown, Massachusetts, from 1864 to 1869, and of the First Congregational church in Washington, District of Columbia, from 1869 to 1884. He was called in 1884 to the Orange Valley Congregational church, New Jersey, where he remained until 1889, when he was elected president of Howard university at Washington, District of Columbia, accepting the office in January, 1890. He continued in the presidency of this leading collegiate institution
